Oh-fucking-deeing on the graphic novulars lately, I. I guess to make up for the impending goin' back to school and havin' no money to spend on 'em.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with thiz jazz, per se, and a lot of the crime sketches are fun in a precursing-later-Bendis way and a lot of the early Cleveland Plain Dealer strips are cute in a "appealing-persona-for-mainstream-consumption-beats-faux-edgy-persona-for-comic-fan-consumption" way (I believe the word "kewl" first came out of comic fandom - either way, it says a lot about what's shitty about that corner of the geek universe and its jones for fabulous muscles and dangerous quips). But it's just so ineffably minor, and all the "ha-ha, takin' yer dollars with the scrapings of my output but I'm upfront about it so let it be cool between us" ersatz straight talk kind of makes me like Bendis less than I did before this as well as flagging this as a book aimed squarely at that most odious of species, the (Bendis, in this case) completist. He finishes off with a collection of forewords he's written for other books, for God's sake. ( )